The Third Social of 2010: Thursday, May 27th.

To the distinguished ladies & gentlemen of the Hand Eye Society, it has been ordained:

We shall meet again on Thursday May 27th 2010 at Unit Bar, 1198 Queen West. It is sure to be an auspicious event, occurring as it will at almost the precise moment of the full moon (no, seriously).

OH AND ALSO DID WE MENTION: Mr. Brandon Boyer, he of Offworld & the internet website Boing Boing, newly minted IGF Chairman (!!!), a hero of the people, friend to videogame creators, a curator & broadcaster par excellence, will be in our lovely city of quiet industry for the very first time to deliver some form of immensely significant communication to the assembled videogame creators, enthusiasts, organizers & slack-jawed onlookers.

Doors will open at 19:00 EST & a curated selection of videogames may be available. Suggested arrival time is 19:30 EST. The half-hour presentation will begin at around 20:00 EST. Please note: space is finite, so arrive early and, if possible, be small. Following the presentation one might reasonably expect a mix of friendly conversation & moderate beverage consumption, with the outside chance of some late night poutine, as is occasionally the custom of our tribe.

So mark the date on your (lunar) calendar, alert the press & let’s get cozy!

Gain Exp. At Tonight’s Social

Hello! By now you should all be aware of tonight’s Hand Eye Society Social (details here, but: Unit Bar, 1198 Queen West, doors 7 p.m., presentation 8 p.m.). In an entirely unsanctioned by the event hosts (Capy/Superbrothers) kind of way, I just want to note that I’ll have a few copies of issue minus one of my video game ‘zine, exp., in my bag with me if anyone wants a copy. It’s a mere $5 for 32 pages of fairly unusual video game writing, with articles including Punch Out!! (A failed poem), Metal Gear Ac!d (An absurdly complex DIY boardgame for one), and Red Faction Guerrilla (A dream of a spaceship).

The issue I’ll have with me is the second edition of the issue I sold at Canzine (next to the Torontron, see here) and completely failed to announce at the time, so if you already own a copy, huzzah! and you don’t have to bother picking it up again (unless all the original spelling mistakes and grammatical errors annoy you.)

Anyway, if you see me around and want a copy, just ask (I am the dude next to the magazines in the previously-linked coverage). And if you want one but aren’t coming to the social (for shame!) you can buy online here. Thanks!

first social of 2010 is… Thursday Feb 11th***

To the distinguished membership of the Hand Eye Society: apologies for this double-post (reason: it’s complicated), please note that the corrected date for this event is Thursday, February 11th 2010. ***

For the fifth Hand Eye Society Social, the first of 2010, we are preparing a brief audiovisual presentation intended to thrill & amuse. Hosted by Mr. Nathan Vella of Toronto’s own Capy, a studio that has recently released a couple of thingamjigs for Sony & Nintendo’s machines, the presentation will include glimpses at two types of blinking lights offered by two dudes with beards:

Firstly, Mr. Kris Piotrowski, born in Poland & raised in Cuban Missile Ssauga, a former Ryerson film student and currently creative director at one of them independent videogame studios located here in Toronto, will be presenting for the first time a (hopefully) crazybananas Wiiware project called ‘Heartbeat’, while attempting to explain some learnings from its roundabout design process.

Secondly, Mr. Craig D. Adams, born on Canada’s west coast & living in Toronto since the turn of this 21st century, will be presenting a three-way collaborative project named ‘Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP’, described as a brave experiment in I/O cinema for Apple’s touchtronic machines featuring 1) the remarkable pixel artwork of Superbrothers, an ambiguously pluralized & irritatingly cryptic art & design organization known for the occasional published pixel illustration & a few DIY videogame efforts at ToJam & with the AGI plus 2) the soulful soundz of Toronto’s Jim Guthrie, the Juno nominated recording artist known for using a PSone as a drum machine & sequencer to make marvelous music 3) the engineering capabilities & videogame design prowess of the fine & noble folks at Capy.

These two projects, still deep in development and up until now all but unseen, will be making what is effectively their world premiere at this free presentation and social event at Unit Bar on Queen West in Toronto on February 11th. Doors will open & beers will be available from 19:00 EST and the half-hour presentation itself will begin at 20:00 EST (otherwise known as eight o’clock in the evening).

Afterwards the entire Heartbeat & S:S&S EP teams, including Mr.Jim Guthrie, will be on-hand for chit-chat, poutine or what-have-you.

*** It has been reported by members of the Hand Eye Society that, due to a rare bug with Safari, Mozilla & all internet browsers other than Netscape Explorer v1.7, the date of the next social was incorrectly displayed in a recently published post & in the promotional images on handeyesociety.com & everywhere else on the internet too.

The correct date for the next social is in fact Thursday February 11th 2010. For real. The 11th. ELEVEN. TEN PLUS ONE. (NOT THE FOURTH). We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this confusion may have caused.

Social #5: The World Premiere of Something Cool

At:
the Unit Bar
1198 Queen St W.
MAP
the unlabelled bar next to the pawnshop, which is next to the Gladstone

On:
November 26th, 2009.
7PM

Let’s:
Smash talk the trash and video games what?

Seriously:
Pekko Koskinen,
from FINLAND, designer of two IGF award winning games Dragonfly Variations and Spawns of Deflebub, as well as co-creator of TOJam game Flowers of Error

and Shawn McGrath,
from EVERYWHERE, creator of Chain3 for iPhone, as well as ToJam favourites Xiq and A Game About Bouncing

Together they secretly collaborate on an unannounced project, Dyad, making this social the WORLD PREMIERE of their new game.  Watch a demonstration of the game and then a break down of design concepts showing an evolution from THIS to THIS.  Afterwards, ask Pekko how he choregraped a dance using shoot-em-up game rules, and ask Shawn about how awesome it was to have Tetsuya Mizuguchi (producer of Rez, Lumines, Space Channel 5) play his game.

As coleslaw, or corn-bread, but ultimately depending on blood sugar levels, Jon Mak (Everyday Shooter guy) may present old, abandoned prototypes of games he and Shawhan (I Am Robot and Proud guy) worked on.

COME and BRING ALL FRIENDS.

Hand Eye Society: The Quadrocial (Social #4)

THIS JUST IN: METANET SOFTWARE ORGANIZES EPIC INTRA-CONTINENTAL MISSION!

In an unprecedented reversal of conventional game-developer migration patterns, Alex Austin (Cryptic Sea‘s designer/programmer, aka “the one without tattoos and a goatee”) will be coming all the way from California (Santa Cruz) to Ontario (Toronto).

Yes, you read that right — it’s the never-fabled SW-to-NE crossing!  It’ll be just like “Gold Rush”, but with more than 4 colours, and backwards! Hopefully Alex will remember to LOOK SCHEDULE and BUY MOSQUITO NET!

We know, it’s crazy. And it’s happening August 27th 2009 at Unit Bar, 1198 Queen St W. (7-10pm)

Here’s Unit Bar on Google Maps.

And here are pics of some of the many other Alex Austins who will probably not be attending, courtesy of Google Images. Though to be fair, if any of them had been making their own games for over a decade, we would have invited them too.

(NOTE: you may have a hard time finding Unit partly because the window is full of junk, making it look like yet another semi-abandoned gallery space on West-West-West-Queen-West-West, and mostly because the only “signage” is the word Unit scrawled in chalk on a wall next to the doorway — perpendicular to the sidewalk! So, be extra vigilant when trying to locate it… it really does exist!)

Alex will be showing off (as usual), and talking about some of the exciting and wonderful stuff they’ve been cooking up down south, when they’re not too busy having rollerskating-pizza-karaoke-birthday-parties with Jon Blow. Also we (Metanet) will hopefully have something super-exciting to show. Or at least something exciting — frankly, at this point we’re just shooting for “something”!

Come one, come all.

p.s – Little Known Fact: Toru Iwatani originally came up with the idea for Gish when he observed a pizza missing a slice. Then he forgot all about it and made Pac-Man instead; it wasn’t until twenty years later that Alex and Edmund re-discovered the idea and turned it into a game!

p.p.s – If you’re wondering how the shape and/or colour of a pizza could possibly suggest Gish, it’s because you’ve never seen Japanese pizza — they put really disgusting stuff like mayo and bonito flakes on there, at the same time! A double-cheeze smothered with tar and a couple of eyeballs isn’t really much of a stretch.